Assemblyman Wins Vote for Flake's Seat

By JONATHAN P. HICKS

Published: February 4, 1998

Backed by the long-time incumbent and the Queens Democratic Party, Gregory W. Meeks, a State Assemblyman, won a contentious five-candidate race last night to succeed Representative Floyd H. Flake.

With all of the vote counted, Mr. Meeks, a 44-year-old former prosecutor, finished with a commanding 57 percent.

Mr. Meeks had put together a broad coalition of Democrats in the Sixth Congressional District, despite the presence in the election of two of his Democratic colleagues in the Legislature with longer tenures in elective office as well as a well-financed Republican.

Mr. Meeks's most prominent opponent was State Senator Alton R. Waldon Jr., a veteran Queens legislator who served briefly in Congress 11 years ago, and had also raised considerable money and assembled a formidable campaign organization. After failing to secure the Democratic nomination, Mr. Waldon ran on the Conservative and Independence lines.

''This campaign had a mission,'' Mr. Meeks said, standing in a Queens restaurant amid a collection of some of the city's most prominent Democrats. ''We presented our ideas for the future and we did it convincingly.''

Mr. Meeks, a former head of the statewide Council of Black Elected Officials, pointed to his election as a significant event in the development of a new generation of black political leaders in New York City.

''My role, as a part of a new generation of African-American leadership, is to take us to the next phase of the civil rights movement: that is, the economic development of our community,'' he said.

Mr. Meeks, who was born in Harlem and grew up in public housing, is a graduate of Adelphi University and the Howard University School of Law. He is a former assistant district attorney in Queens and went on to become a judge of the State Workers Compensation Board.

Mr. Waldon had 21 percent of the vote. The remaining votes were split among three other candidates. Celestine V. Miller, a school district superintendent, ran on the Republican line and had 13 percent. Assemblywoman Barbara M. Clark, a Democrat who also failed to win her party's nomination, secured enough voter signatures to run on her own ballot line and won 9 percent. The last candidate was Mary Cronin, on the Right to Life line, who received 1 percent.

The special election in the Sixth District was one of several contests yesterday. In another, a special election in southern Brooklyn to fill the remainder of the term of former Assemblyman Jules Polonetsky, Adele Cohen, a labor union lawyer, defeated Joseph Kovac, a member of the Republican Party's executive committee in Brooklyn.

Mr. Polonetsky resigned in December to take a job as Commissioner of the City Department of Consumer Affairs.

Ms. Cohen, a Democratic district leader, captured 75 percent of the vote in the 46th Assembly District, while Mr. Kovac had just 25 percent.

On Long Island, the Republican Party retained two Assembly seats from Nassau County.

In the 17th Assembly District, Maureen O'Connell of East Williston, a 47-year-old attorney and registered nurse, defeated a Democrat, Mark Keefe, for the seat formerly held by Michael Balboni, a Republican who was elected to the State Senate last year. Ms. O'Connell, who narrowly lost a race in November for North Hempstead Supervisor, received 82 percent of the vote, and Mr. Keefe had 16 percent.

In the 19th Assembly District, Kathleen Murray of Levittown defeated JoAnn Flora, a Democrat, for the seat vacated by Charles O'Shea, who became Nassau County assessor last year. Ms. Murray, an attorney in the office of State Attorney General Dennis C. Vacco, won with 73 percent of the vote to Ms. Flora's 25 percent.

Mr. Flake's former Congressional district stretches from Jamaica, South Ozone Park, Springfield Gardens and Hollis in Queens to portions of the Rockaway peninsula. With a 1990 population that was 22 percent white, 16 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian and 53 percent black, it is one of the city's largest black middle-class areas.

Although Mr. Flake's resignation became effective in mid-November, the campaign to succeed him had been in full swing since the summer, when he announced he would leave Capitol Hill before the end of the term to devote more time to his church, the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica.

In the weeks that followed, the jockeying for the job rekindled political animosities dating back more than a decade, when Mr. Flake and Mr. Waldon skirmished over the very same Congressional seat.

In 1986, Mr. Waldon faced Mr. Flake in a heated special election after the death of Representative Joseph P. Addabbo. Mr. Waldon won that contest, but two months after he went to Congress, Mr. Flake defeated him in the Democratic primary for the full term and went on to Congress in 1987.

Those two races produced bitterness that carried into yesterday's election. Mr. Flake was one of the most vocal supporters of Mr. Meeks.

In many ways, yesterday's election was the second major electoral battle this year involving the Congressional seat. Last month, the Democratic Party in Queens, in a vote of about two dozen district leaders, selected Mr. Meeks as its nominee.

That endorsement gave Mr. Meeks crucial support in the highly Democratic district in southeast Queens, but did not deter others from mounting an election-day challenge, including Mr. Waldon, a 60-year-old former police captain.

Mr. Meeks subsequently picked up a wide array of endorsements, including some Democratic officials who had initially supported Mr. Waldon, like Archie Spigner, the City Council deputy majority leader. And in spite of their own political feud, both City Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and the Rev. Al Sharpton supported Mr. Meeks, as did H. Carl McCall, the state comptroller, and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.

Mr. Waldon remained in the race and on the ballot by securing nominations of the Conservative Party and the Independence Party.

Drawing on a large bank of volunteers, Ms. Clark collected more than 7,000 signatures to run on her own line, the 21st Century Party.

The Republican Party also played a strong role in the race. Ms. Miller, who was a Democrat until two months ago, ran with the party's help. She spent heavily and had the strongest presence on the radio, where her ads were broadcast frequently in the last week.

Although the campaign was a short one, it was nonetheless spirited. The candidates hired a battery of consultants, pollsters and advisers.

During the campaign, Mr. Meeks sought to present an image of a more youthful legislator who placed equal emphasis on the need for education reform and for economic development in the district.